National Park Service let go its last engineer who monitored abandoned wells, which pose a 'significant threat'

Unplugged oil and gas wells can still spew noxious gases 
and pollute groundwater. (Adobe Stock photo)

Forrest Smith was the National Park Service's sole engineer tasked with finding and cleaning up the roughly 93 abandoned gas and oil wells scattered across federal lands. But in September, the NPS chose not to renew Smith's contract, leaving no one to track leaky wells. Old, unplugged wells can pose a "significant threat to the environment and public health," reports Maxine Joselow of The New York Times.

Often dubbed "orphaned wells," most forgotten sites were drilled and abandoned before the "national parks were established," Joselow explains. Orphaned wells can continue to spew noxious gases, such as methane, a greenhouse gas, and benzene, a chemical "linked to leukemia and other blood cancers. . . . .Oil and brine can seep from the wells into aquifers that supply drinking water to nearby communities."

Inactive and orphaned wells will continue to pose an unseen threat because the NPS lacks employees to monitor sites and make arrangements to have them sealed through a process know as "plugging". Beau Kiklis, associate director of energy and landscape conservation at the National Parks Conservation Association, told Joselow, "I don’t think I can underscore enough that this has been a significantly underestimated public health and safety problem." 

Smith estimated that there are "around 2,500 inactive wells on Park Service lands, including 93 that are orphaned. Of those abandoned wells, about 70 are leaking methane," Joselow reports.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, told the Times that "the Park Service 'has made strong progress in meeting the administration’s priorities to identify and plug orphaned wells on park lands,' and that 'staffing levels naturally fluctuate as appointments conclude and new positions are filled.'"

As the Trump administration pushes coal energy, now is a good time to report on coal ash

View of the 2008 Kingston, Tennessee, spill that prompted coal ash 
regulations. (Photo by  Brian Stansberry, Wikimedia CC)

Almost every state in the union has coal ash stored in ponds, landfills and mines that is likely leaching toxic heavy metals into groundwater and wells. Especially now that the Trump administration is busy promoting coal energy production, it's an opportune time for local reporting on the possible presence and handling of coal ash in readers' neighborhoods.

The unfortunate truth is that coal ash can be found in a lot of places. "There are some 700 to 1,425 massive dumps of coal ash," reports Joseph A. Davis for the Society of Environmental Journalists. "States and utilities are doing little or nothing to remedy the threat that it presents." 

What is coal ash? "When coal is burned, it produces several waste byproducts," Davis writes. "The fancy name for all of it is 'coal combustion residuals.' The common name is coal ash."

Where is it found? Any plant that produces electricity from coal would leave behind coal ash as a byproduct. Coal operators put coal ash in surface impoundments, also known as ponds, in on-site landfills, or some recycle it into usable materials.

Why is it a problem? Coal ash contains many toxic substances, especially heavy metals such as arsenic, chromium, lead, and lithium. "It also contains radium, which is radioactive," Davis explains. Many coal operators have left piles of coal ash to fester and poison land and water sources.

What can be done about it? Cleaning up coal ash ponds can involve draining the surface water and capping the pond or entirely removing the ash from the pond to a lined landfill or for beneficial reuse (clean closure). Earthjustice provides a good resource document here.

Story ideas:

• How many coal ash disposal areas are there in your area? Are there coal ash sites not on an official list? Why not? Are utilities acknowledging clear responsibility for existing sites?
• Have any of the coal ash sites in your area been cleaned up to a nominal safety standard? Have they been moved to a landfill? Is it lined and capped? Safe from water? Is the new disposal site safer than the old one?
• What waters are near your area’s coal ash sites? Are the sites near a river, lake or estuary? Are they above an aquifer? Is that aquifer a drinking water source? Has anyone tested for water pollution and, if so, what were the findings?
• Historically, have there been pollution incidents in your area related to coal ash sites?
• What level of responsibility are states and utilities taking for stabilization, cleanup or maintenance of coal ash sites in your area?
• What do people in your state think about using coal ash in the concrete on local roads? Is it being done? Do people know about it?

Resources:

• Environmental Protection Agency: The EPA is the primary federal agency responsible for regulating and overseeing coal ash dumps to make them safer and less polluting.
• State environmental agencies: In some cases, the EPA has already devolved coal-ash cleanup responsibilities to state environmental agencies. See a list here.
• Earthjustice: This environmental advocacy and litigation group has for years specialized in coal ash, among other issues. The best source is Lisa Evans.
• American Coal Ash Association: An industry lobby group aimed mainly at lightening the coal ash regulatory burden on utilities and promoting the reuse of coal ash — and the idea that doing so is safe.

'Orphan' gas and oil wells are found 'everywhere,' as the federal government aims to plug these hidden polluters

Adapted screenshot of interactive map that has data by county; for the interactive version click here.

Workers cap an orphaned well in Louisiana.
(Photo by Cooper Neill, The Washington Post)

On its own, an orphaned oil or gas well (named so because often no viable owner exists) has little impact the planet; however, across the U.S., there are thousands of unplugged wells that "collectively account for a significant source of the potent greenhouse gas" and pollute water, notes Brady Dennis of The Washington Post. "Congress set aside an unprecedented $4.7 billion to fund the idea in late 2021. . . . Dedicating billions of dollars to target the most troublesome wells around the country has the potential to result in significantly fewer toxic substances, such as arsenic and benzene, polluting groundwater."

Dennis joined the Tolbert Construction crew in the piney woods of Louisiana to understand the "find-and-plug-well" process: "Merely locating orphan wells can be arduous, and plugging them is tedious, time-consuming and expensive. To follow a crew like Tolbert's is to understand how the work is a mixture of sweat, science and improvisation. They must navigate swampy roads or thick forests with heavy equipment to access the wells, remove miles of steel piping, set underground plugs to prevent fluid from flowing, fill straw-like holes with cement, remove the well head, and restore the land to something resembling normal. The whole endeavor takes days and can cost $30,000 to plug a single well — and sometimes far more."

Attempting to count abandoned wells is like counting stars. "The wells are everywhere. They're in backyards and buried under thorny thickets in suburban woods. Rusted pipes rise from the farmland of Texas and New Mexico, from an Amish community in Kentucky, from the bayous in Louisiana and the dense forests in Pennsylvania and Ohio," Dennis writes. "They have been found under sidewalks and driveways, houses and apartment buildings — and in at least one Wyoming schoolyard."

Adam Peltz, a director and senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund who has worked on the issue for years, told Dennis, "We really only know where a fraction of them are. We are only scratching the surface on this." Dennis reports, "According to its most recent national inventory, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the actual number of abandoned wells around the country could be in the millions and that the methane that leaks from them each year accounts for nearly 3 percent of the U.S. total."

Dennis explains, "Curtis Shuck, a former oil and gas executive, founded a nonprofit known as the Well Done Foundation, whose work has been funded primarily by philanthropic donors and corporate sponsors. . . . His foundation also has backed a carbon accounting methodology that, if adopted by the American Carbon Registry, could offer an incentive for businesses that want to offset emissions. Already, the nonprofit is plugging or monitoring wells in about a dozen states and has plugged 25 wells so far, with plans to keep expanding."

"Louisiana is home to more than 4,500 orphaned wells . . . . there are high hopes for the months ahead," Dennis reports. "With the federal money flowing, the state and its contractors have already plugged more than 100 wells this year, and some workers say 500 or more might be possible depending on the weather and any problems they encounter. Patrick Courreges, a Louisiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman, told Dennis, "We want to show bang for the buck."

Groundwater group urges owners of water wells to prepare for drought by getting their systems inspected

Map by University of Nebraska-Lincoln, adapted by The Rural Blog; for details, click here.

Private water well owners should prepare for extreme drought, the National Ground Water Association urged recently. 

Drought reduces a well's productivity and the quality of its water, so owners should have their systems inspected and water levels tested as soon as possible. NGWA recommends these steps:

• Have your water well inspected by a certified water well contractor. Wells that are not operating correctly will waste water and are more likely to completely fail during prolonged periods of drought. An inspection can help locate current and potential problems with a system before they become serious issues.
• Test your well water. There has been growing evidence that lower water tables, deeper wells, and extreme drought have led to higher levels of contaminants in groundwater. These contaminants can typically be easily identified and treated with a simple water quality test.
• Test your water levels. Declining water levels can impact not only the mechanics of your well but also water quality. A simple water level test can help determine what service may or may not be needed.
• Conserve water, fix leaks, and utilize water-efficient technology. By properly conserving water, fixing leaks, and utilizing more efficient water technology, you can help ensure your water levels remain healthy for you and your neighbors.
• Don’t delay. Due to ongoing drought, supply chain issues, and national labor shortages, well owners are seeing longer than usual wait times for service. If it has been more than a year since your last water well inspection, we urge well owners to reach out today to a certified contractor.

Well owners can find more information about drought at WellOwner.org, which is operated by the NGWA with support from the Rural Community Assistance Partnership and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Infrastructure bill has provisions for abandoned mine and well reclamation, dangerous dam removal, and more

The infrastructure package the Senate passed Tuesday has plenty in it for rural America. The Rural Blog has previously reported on this, but some parts of the huge bill are still coming to light. 

The package allocates $11.3 billion to help clean up abandoned mines, nearly double the $6 billion the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund has received in the past 15 years (see p. 1776 of the bill) but short of the estimated $20 billion (click here for state estimates) needed for total clean-up costs.

The package also has $4.7 billion for plugging and reclaiming abandoned oil and gas wells on federal, state and tribal lands (p. 1744). States can apply for competitive grants of up to $25 million for the purpose. Well and mine operators must post bonds meant to cover clean-up costs, but they're often inadequate, and rural governments are frequently stuck with the bill when companies go under.

The mine funding will be spread over 15 years and will go to 25 states and three tribes: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the Crow, Hopi and Navajo.

Dam safety also gets attention in the bill: It creates and funds a $553 million grant program for hydroelectric dam owners to make them safer and more efficient. And it would provide $1.6 billion for government agencies to remove dangerous dams. 

The package calls on the Transportation Department's Build America Bureau to establish a Rural and Tribal Assistance Pilot Program to provide technical, financial and legal assistance to rural and tribal governments' infrastructure projects. The pilot program is meant to last five years, and is funded as follows: $1.6 million for fiscal year 2022, $1.8 million for FY 2023, $2 million for FY 2024, $2.2 million for FY 2025, and $2.4 million for FY 2026.

Residents in town of 300, without public water for over a year, getting it after investigative reporter sounds alarm

Wikipedia map

Pushed by investigative journalism, officials installed a new well system after a reporter revealed that residents in a small Mississippi town had gone for more than a year without a public water supply.

Residents on the outskirts of Schlater, a majority-Black town of about 300, had been without clean, running water since July 2019 because of broken well pumps, forcing them to travel nearly 13 miles to get water several times a week, Aallyah Wright reports for Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news outlet.

After Wright's initial story in December about the problem, Brandon Presley, Northern District commissioner on the state's elected Public Service Commission, "conducted follow-up discussions with federal and local water agencies and local lawmakers to see what could be done to assist the families and established a two-phase plan," Wright reports.

"In May, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced the receipt of a $63,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to build a new well," Wright reports. It took more legal wrangling, but last week Schlater residents finally celebrated a groundbreaking ceremony for the new system, which should be complete in two to three months.

At the groundbreaking, Presley celebrated the success story, but voiced worry that other small towns are "falling through the cracks" because they aren't getting the same kind of attention, Wright reports.

"There’s too many areas in Mississippi like where we are today that are forgotten places and that’s just a fact," said Presley, a Democrat who was mayor of Nettleton, a town of 2,000. "Too many people in state government forget that areas like Schlater in our small, rural communities exist."

USDA opens applications for rural water well system grants

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced this week that it's accepting Fiscal Year 2020 applications for grants to build, fix or improve household water well systems.

The Household Water Well System Grants program doesn't provide funding to individual households. Instead, qualified non-profit organizations can use the funds to create a revolving loan fund; individual well owners who might otherwise be unable to qualify for a loan can then take out a low-interest loan from the non-profit. The non-profit or a third-party donor must contribute at least 10 percent in matching funds for the grant.

Eligible areas are: tribal lands in rural areas, rural areas with a population of 50,000 or under, and colonias. Applications are due by May 31. Click here for more information or to apply.

Farm safety experts share tips for recovering from flooding

AgriSafe Network illustration highlights several health and safety risk factors that cold-weather floods can cause around the farm. Click the image to enlarge it.

Last year's record flooding devastated crops across the Midwest, and this spring is looking pretty soggy too. But damaged or prevented crops aren't the only problems cold-weather floods can cause, according to AgriSafe Network farm safety experts Linda Emanuel and Ellen Duysen, who spoke recently at the 2020 Nebraska Women in Agriculture Conference, Lori Potter reports for the Kearney Hub in Nebraska.

Emanuel is a farmer and registered nurse, and Duysen is the coordinator and outreach specialist for the Central States Center of Agricultural Safety and Health in the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Public Health.

After a flood recedes, farmers and rural residents often must contend with infections from poor sanitation, toxic mold, respiratory issues, contaminated water wells, E. Coli-related intestinal problems, and stress, they told conference attendees. It's also important to pay attention to mental health in the wake of a disaster, Emanuel said, since poor health and nutrition, lack of sleep, weather worries, finances, and isolation can all contribute to stress, Potter reports.

Duysen advised attendees not to wait for a flood to test their private wells, and said that more than 80 percent tested at any time are contaminated, She also advised attendees to make sure they had family and community response plans in place for future floods, Potter reports.

Record-dry February in California raises wildfire risk; could worsen well access for small farmers and rural residents

California just had its driest February on record, part of a climate change-related dry spell that will likely exacerbate chronic overuse of groundwater by agriculture, increase the risk of wildfires, and make life harder for small farmers and rural residents who use wells.

About 90 percent of California's annual precipitation usually falls between Oct. 1 and April 30, and about half of the annual precipitation is in December, January and February. This year's record-dry February followed a drier-than-average January and fall, Kendra Pierre-Louis and Nadja Popovich report for The New York Times. There was a decent amount of snow in December, but the state would need record-breaking rain and snow in March and April to make up the deficit.

Latest Drought Monitor map outlines dominant impacts; S means
short-term impacts; L means long-term; yellow areas are abnormally
dry; tan areas have moderate drought; orange have severe drought.

Rain isn't everything: The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada provides up to 30% of the state's drinking water and 75% of its agricultural water. As of March 1, the state's total snowpack was 44% of normal, and in the southern southern Sierras it was only 40%, Pierre-Louis and Popovich report. Many parts of Oregon, Washington state and Nevada are also seeing abnormally dry conditions.

Decreasing precipitation means farmers have to rely more on irrigation, and that's drying up some of the streams and rivers in the western U.S. Large farming operations are taking the lion's share of the groundwater, Susie Cagle reports for The Guardian. Meanwhile, smaller farmers and rural residents must dig ever deeper to hit water and their wells are increasingly going dry, Cagle reports. That problem will get worse if global warming continues unchecked, according to a study in Nature.

Lack of precipitation isn't the only problem in California. It's been warmer than average too, which dries out soil and increases wildfire risk. Between Jan. 1 and March 1, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, responded to 381 reports of wildfires. That's about 35% higher than average, Pierre-Louis and Popovich report.

Fertilizer use poses environmental risks, even climate change, but state-based regulation hasn't proven effective

Orange area is annual "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico,
caused mainly by fertilizer in Mississippi River watershed.
(Image from four-minute video by Grist)

Fertilizer has caused more environmental problems in recent years, and regulation by states has been ineffective, Joe Wertz reports for The Center for Public Integrity's nonprofit newsroom.

"In America’s Corn Belt and around the world, some of the fertilizer applied to fields escapes the soil in new forms that contaminate and warm the planet. Some of these compounds enter the atmosphere as a potent greenhouse gas that’s now at its highest concentration in the last 800,000 years, helping fuel climate problems like the flooding that upended farmers’ lives last spring," Wertz reports. "Other fertilizer byproducts contaminate water wells, especially in agricultural areas, where the U.S. Geological Survey says one in five has levels exceeding federal health limits. These contaminants also wash into streams, rivers and lakes, where they become what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls 'one of America’s most widespread, costly and challenging environmental problems.'"

Farmers are using 40 times more nitrogen than they did 75 years ago, and though EPA has advised limiting its use for years, states have most of the authority and have preferred to depend on voluntary cooperation instead of laws that enforce compliance. "An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, Grist and The World found that when states do try to regulate farms and reduce pollution linked to fertilizer, rules are often derailed or softened after industry pushback and political pressure," Wertz reports.

The video with the report emphasizes one solution: cover crops that keep rain and snow from hitting bare soil and leaching its nutrients into streams. It says only 4 percent of U.S. cropland is planted in cover crops after harvests. It cites a cover-crop experiment in the small watershed of the William Baker Ditch in northern Indiana, which reduced runoff by half, nitrates 20% and phosphorus 70%.

Industrial farms draining Arizona aquifers; state lawmakers try to figure out a way to help family farmers

As winter planting continues in Arizona, state officials are once again grappling with how to deal with farms' increasing demand for water in the face of drier weather and how to get that water to where it's needed, Howard Fischer reports for Capitol Media Services in Tucson.

In Arizona and other southwestern states, many farms draw water from the Colorado River, but other areas use groundwater. In many rural areas of Arizona, there is no limit to how much groundwater farmers can take. Many large industrial farms have set up shop in such areas, and they're draining aquifers at an unsustainable rate. "As the groundwater is depleted, Arizona is suffering permanent losses that may not be recouped for thousands of years," Ian James and Rob O'Dell report for the Arizona Republic. "These underground reserves that were laid down over millennia represent the only water that many rural communities can count on as the desert Southwest becomes hotter and drier with climate change."

Large farming outfits are drying up water for nearby family farmers, Fischer reports. House Minority Leader Charlene Fernandez, D-Yuma, said the state needs to see how much groundwater is being taken each year, but also said some residents didn't like the notion of metering wells, Fischer reports.

"Complicating any solution politically is the fact that one of the larger operations uses Arizona groundwater to grow hay to ship to Saudi Arabia to feed cattle there," Fischer reports. Fernandez, who has been a key player in shaping state water legislation, said there needs to be a way to distinguish between family farmers and corporate farmers whom, she believes, don't have a "vested interest" in preserving Arizona's long-term water viability.

Report: more than 2 million Americans lack clean water

More than two million Americans lack access to clean water, according to a new report by clean-water advocacy non-profits DigDeep and the U.S. Water Alliance. The U.S. doesn't have a reliable, central data source to track how many Americans lack access to water and sanitation, according to the report. So DigDeep founder George McGraw commissioned experts from around the country to piece together the data.

The problem disproportionately affects rural residents, especially Native Americans on reservations, and those in substandard housing, the report found. Because African American and Latinx populations are more likely to live in substandard housing, they're disproportionately affected too.

Moreover, states and local or tribal governments are increasingly on the hook to pay for water system improvements. "Today federal funding for water infrastructure is a small percentage of what it once was. Across the country, 44 million people are served by water systems that recently had Safe Drinking Water Act violations," Lauren Morales reports for NPR.

Native Americans are the worst off, according to the report. Out of every 1,000 Native American households, 58 lack plumbing, compared with three of every 1,000 white households, Morales reports. Navajo Darlene Yazzie said she has to drive nine miles away to access fresh water, and the price is going up soon. She has a windmill-powered well, but the well is dry when the wind isn't blowing, she told Morales. "Yazzie said the windmill water isn't safe for humans anyway. Officials told her arsenic and uranium levels are too high. Yazzie and many others give the water to their animals, even though they plan to eat them," Morales reports. But it's often prohibitively expensive to build water pipelines to remote tribal nations in the Southwest: the Indian Health Service estimated it would cost $200 million to provide basic water and sanitation access to the Navajo Nation.

The problem isn't limited to reservations. Martin County in rural Eastern Kentucky has gained national attention because its water system is so terrible. Things got so bad there that state regulators ordered the water district to sign a contract giving control to outside management by tomorrow or face serious financial penalties. "State regulators placed the blame squarely on the district’s past and current management, saying officials made 'little to no effort to repair and replace aging infrastructure in order to maintain an adequate level of service to its ratepayers,' failed to keep adequate financial records, and failed to hire a permanent general manager," Will Wright reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Water wells go deeper; makers of unique map say that won't solve supply problems; 120 million in U.S. rely on wells

Well depth trends, 2000-15; some states and areas lack data. Click on image to enlarge it. (Map by Perrone and Jasechko)

A first-of-its-kind map illustrates how important groundwater is to American livelihoods, and shows that water wells are going deeper due to shrinking aquifers and other issues. But deeper drilling is an unsustainable practice, say the water-resource scientists who created the map, Debra Perrone and Scott Jasechko. Both are assistant professors at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Though the U.S. recently had its wettest spring on record, groundwater supplies in many areas are still lower than normal, even in places with wet climates like southern Georgia, Perrone and Jasechko write for The Conversation. That matters because groundwater supplies drinking water to more than 120 million Americans and provides more than half of the water used for irrigation.

"As climate change intensifies, groundwater is likely to become even more important because it is generally more resilient to climate variations than river flows are. But unlike rivers and the dams, levees and spillways people have built to control them, groundwater is hidden. Groundwater wells are small, widely distributed and often out of view," Perrone and Jasechko write.

They created the groundwater map over the past four years using state, regional and county agency data from more than 60 different databases; the process took longer because there is no national requirement to collect information about groundwater wells, Perrone and Jasechko write.

What their map found: between 1975 and 2015, wells have been dug increasingly deep in 70 percent of the areas they studied, especially in the Colorado River Basin. "There are many reasons why people may be drilling increasingly deep wells, and they don’t all imply doom and gloom," Perrone and Jasechko write. "For example, deeper wells may be the result of improved well and pump technologies; discovery of deeper fresh groundwater reserves; different permit requirements for shallower versus deeper groundwaters; inadequate water yields in some layers; or poor water quality at shallower depths."

However, drilling deeper can't go on forever for a variety of reasons: sometimes it's impractical because of the nature of rock strata, and deeper groundwater is sometimes too salty. Deep wells also may be too expensive for many farmers, Perrone and Jasechko write.

Private wells, Superfund sites at risk from Midwest flooding

Major flooding in the Midwest could put more than 1 million private wells in mostly rural areas at risk of contamination, The Associated Press warns.

"The high water and swift current carries raw sewage from overburdened treatment plants, animal waste and pesticides from farm fields, and spilled fuel," AP's Jim Salter reports. "Contaminated water can carry bacteria such as E. coli that can cause gastrointestinal illness, reproductive problems and neurological disorders, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infants, young children, pregnant women, elderly people, and people with compromised immune systems are particularly vulnerable."

According the National Ground Water Association, the 1.1 million private wells at risk span 300 counties in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and South Dakota. The National Weather Service warned that the threat could persist well into spring because of upcoming snowmelt in northern states.

The flooding could also cause some Superfund sites to leach contaminants that could get into local water supplies. The Environmental Protection Agency is assessing two such sites for groundwater contamination: the Nebraska Ordnance Plant in Mead, and the Conservation Chemical Corp. in Kansas City, Mo. "The Mead site operated as a munitions plant from 1942 to 1956 and its disposal of radioactive waste and other chemicals led to groundwater contamination. The EPA says it has not found evidence that any hazardous contaminants were released by the flooding" but will "evaluate the sites further as floodwaters recede," AP reports.

Emails show Florida officials delayed informing rural residents about potentially contaminated well water

Marion County, Florida (Wikipedia map)

State officials waited four months to notify some rural Florida residents near Ocala that their private wells could be contaminated with potentially harmful chemicals, according to emails obtained by the Miami Herald, Samantha Gross and Elizabeth Koh report for the newspaper.

Preliminary tests from the state Department of Environmental Protection indicated that wells in three clusters had elevated levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), chemicals used in fire retardants, which studies suggest could cause cancer and other health problems, Gross and Koh report. One site was near the Florida State Fire College in Ocala, the second was near a Marion County fire station, and the third was near a mining operation owned by Lhoist North America.

In August, the DEP confirmed that flame retardants containing PFOS and PFOA had been used at the Fire College in the past, and in early September they told those at college to drink only bottled water. It wasn't until late October, though, that the DEP discussed notifying the rest of the community. The mining company was notified on Nov. 6. Linda Lawson, who lives half a mile from the Fire College, said she was not notified about the problem until Nov. 5. That evening, a Marion County Department of Health official came to her door with a few cases of bottled water and told her not to drink from her decades-old well anymore because of unsafe chemical levels, Gross and Koh report.

State workers have continued to bring the Lawsons jugs of drinking water and on Nov. 28 installed a filter on their well, though the family was instructed to keep drinking bottled water for two more months until more tests could be conducted. But their next-door neighbor, Miriam Flores, says she wasn't informed about the problem, and that when she and other neighbors called the local health department, someone there told her the issue was "nothing." A script sent to health department employees, which the Herald obtained, instructed employees to tell concerned residents that short-term exposure to PFOS and PFOA are unlikely to be harmful and that residents need not change their daily routines or find an alternate water supply, Gross and Koh report. After the Herald began asking officials about the testing, they finally tested Flores' water on Dec. 11 and informed her on Dec. 28 that her water had more than 20 times the acceptable level of chemical contamination. The state has still not installed a filter on her well.

"Les Beitsch, a former deputy secretary in the Florida Department of Health, speculates that health officials delayed notifying Lawson and the two other well users because of the impending election," Gross and Koh report. Beitsch "was effectively fired in November, he said, because he pushed back against the idea of any delay in notifying well-water users of the problem." Beitsch is a physician who is a department chair at Florida State University's College of Medicine.

A Florida DOH spokesperson told the Herald that they had "immediately notified well owners of results" and have "worked diligently to obtain the necessary permissions to conduct additional private well sampling." The DOH scheduled an Oct. 16 open house to inform the public and the Fire College about what was happening with the water supply, but was rescheduled for Dec. 4 because of Hurricane Michael, Gross and Koh report.

Series explores rural water quality issues – supply, quality, management and more – in the Upper Midwest

"The land near Wisconsin's Little Plover River didn't used to be much good for farming – until center-pivot irrigation," the StarTribune reports. "Since then, the river's base flow has drastically diminished." (StarTribune photo by Aaron Lavinsky)

Josephine Marcotty of the StarTribune in Minneapolis has written an outstanding three-part series on rural water quality in the Upper Midwest called "Water Pressure." Essentially, Minnesota, "a state renowned for its abundant water, confronts a difficult new fact of life," Marcotty reports. "It may no longer be able to guarantee what its residents have always taken for granted: Clean drinking water, industrial and agricultural growth, and many thousands of healthy lakes and streams."

Part one explores efforts by the town of Cold Spring, population about 4,500, to balance the needs of residents and a local brewery, and those of farmers who use fertilizer that can pollution. When Cold Springs Brewing Co. expanded in 2012 and needed more water, that threatened a nearby trout stream and triggered a "statewide political fight," Marcotty reports, one which could happen again if there's a drought or the brewery wants to expand again, which it hopes to do.

Part two details how more than 80 residents from rural Wisconsin sued one of the most powerful players in the state's agriculture industry, Central Sands Dairy, alleging that its irrigation and manure-spreading practices have depleted and polluted drinking water and caused the death of an infant. "A young mother in the tiny town of Nekoosa lost an infant daughter to a fatal brain malformation that has been associated with high levels of nitrate, a fertilizer byproduct found in the community’s drinking water," Marcotty writes. "Her tragedy led to a community well testing program this year, which found that 40 percent of the homes had nitrate concentrations that, like hers, were far above the legal limit.

Lewis & Clark Regional Water System
(StarTribune map by Ray Grumney)

Part three looks to the future, holding up the nonprofit Lewis & Clark Regional Water System as a model for how communities, states and the federal government can cooperate to supply areas with limited groundwater. The system consists of 337 miles of underground pipes that carry water drawn from a South Dakota aquifer to 20 cities, towns and utilities in three states (Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska) and soon, Iowa.

The project, in the works for over 25 years, is a solution dreamed up after predictions that the area would eventually run out of water. The proposal faced many challenges along the way; it was too risky for many communities to gamble on, required a great deal of cooperation among communities that did sign on, needed nearly $590 million in state and federal subsidies, and relies on South Dakota water laws to protect the water in the aquifer.

The project could be a national example. Federal and state officials have long encouraged consolidation of small water systems that are prone to problems.

Many drinking-water wells in Southeast could be polluted by flooding from hurricanes, but very few have been tested

Graphic by The Pew Charitable Trusts; click on it to enlarge.

Though hundreds of thousands of private water wells in the Southeast may have been inundated by floodwaters after this year's hurricanes, few have been tested for contamination because most states don't require routine testing of such wells, and lawmakers have been reluctant to mandate it.

The risk of contamination is considerable: "Hurricanes Florence and Michael dumped more than 30 inches of rain on some areas stretching from Florida to North Carolina, creating a toxic soup that may have overwhelmed the nearly 650,000 homes in those areas that rely on well water, according to estimates from the National Groundwater Association," Rebecca Beitsch reports for Stateline. "More than 30 above-ground hog lagoons overflowed in North Carolina after Hurricane Florence, sending pig waste into water inundating surrounding communities. Floodwater from Florence and Michael also contained agricultural runoff, fuel and other contaminants that can seep into the aquifer or flow into man-made wells through their ground-level ventilation systems."

Health departments in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina offered free well water tests to anyone affected by the hurricanes, but fewer than 1,000 homeowners in each state took them up on it, Beitsch reports.

North Carolina is particularly at risk for such contamination; 2.4 million people in the state (about a fifth of its population) rely on private wells, the fifth-highest number in the nation. The state also has a high concentration of open-air pits full of hog or chicken feces, or toxic coal ash from coal-fired power plants.

Across all four hurricane-affected states, more 30 percent of the households that took advantage of the free testing had wells that tested positive for coliform, a bacteria that indicates contamination by surface water. In North Carolina 13 percent of wells tested positive for e. Coli, which can come from feces. Usually only 2 percent of the state's wells test positive for coliforms. And when Georgia tested 108 wells after Hurricane Michael in October, 43 percent were positive for coliforms.

Why don't more people get their wells tested? The testing is cheap or free, but a basic chlorine treatment to kill well bacteria is about $500, Merritt Partridge, vice president of Partridge Well Drilling in Jacksonville told Beitsch: "Some people are drinking water that they shouldn’t be, but they have no idea."

U.S. has less and shallower fresh groundwater than believed; fracking wells may be contaminating some of it

Map from study; click on the image to enlarge it.

The U.S. groundwater supply is smaller than originally thought, much of it is old (meaning such groundwater is unlikely to replenish itself), and hydraulic fracturing wells may be contaminating it, according to a newly published study from researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara, the University of Arizona, and the University of Saskatchewan. Groundwater is the primary source of domestic water supply for half the U.S. population, and about 40 percent of water used for agricultural irrigation comes from groundwater.

Potable groundwater doesn't go as deep as previously thought, too, so drilling deeper wells may not be a long-term solution for increasing demand for fresh water. Moreover, the study found that some fracking wells are so shallow that they can contaminate fresh water instead of going deeper to where the more brackish (saline) water is.

Previous studies suggested that fresh groundwater can go down to 6,500 feet below the surface, but the new research found that the average depth of transition from fresh to brackish water is about 1,800 feet. Aquifers tend to be especially shallow in parts of the eastern U.S., with the transition from fresh to brackish water occurring at less than 1,000 feet.

With 43 million in U.S. on private wells, 1/5 of which are polluted, rural residents wonder about lax regulation

Worries about increasingly contaminated well water have begun to emerge as an election-year issue, Jack Healy reports for The New York Times. "Rural communities call it their own, private Flint—a diffuse, creeping water crisis tied to industrial farms and slack regulations that for years has tainted thousands of residential wells across the Midwest and beyond," Healy writes. "President Trump’s actions to loosen clean water rules have intensified a battle over regulations and environmental protections unfolding on the most intensely local level: in people’s own kitchen faucets."

Much of the reported contamination comes from large-scale farms and concentrated animal feeding operations, which can taint nearby wells with nitrates from fertilizer or E. coli bacteria. Environmental groups complain that Republicans running Midwestern states have weakened pollution rules and cut funding for environmental enforcement and inspections, Healy reports.

About 43 million Americans get their water from private wells, and one in five of those wells are contaminated, according to sampling by the U.S. Geological Survey. And once those wells are drilled, there are few water-quality rules to regulate them, so there's no easy redress for those with polluted water, Healy reports. Homeowners say they have to install expensive filtration systems, dig deeper wells, ignore the problem, or move.

"In Wisconsin, a state report recently found that as many as 42,000 of the state’s 676,000 private wells, or 6 percent, were likely to exceed the federal health standards for nitrates, which can come from fertilizer use and manure spreading," Healy reports. "Nitrates have been linked to a dangerous blood condition in babies and may increase cancer risks in adults."

Minnesota governor has plan to protect water from pollution by nitrate fertilizers; apparently first in Mississippi watershed

Star Tribune map; click on the image for a larger version.

"In an effort to stem the rise of nitrate pollution in rural Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday laid out a plan to balance farmers’ use of fertilizer with the protection of groundwater and drinking water supplies," Josephine Marcotty reports for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

The plan follows a year of debate among farmers, environmentalists and other interested parties on how to best address the problem of nitrate contamination in drinking water. High nitrates levels have been found in dozens of municipal water systems and one-tenth of private wells, especially in southeastern and central parts of the state.

 Nitrate run-off in the Mississippi River, which originates in Minnesota, feeds a yearly algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico that sucks oxygen out of a lengthy swath of water along the coast, killing some aquatic life. In Minnesota, nitrates in drinking water can cause the potentially fatal "blue baby syndrome" and other health conditions.

"Yet curbing farm chemicals is not easy in a state where agriculture contributes $19 billion annually to the economy — much of it tied to the 800,000 tons of fertilizer farmers use on some 16 million acres," Marcotty reports. Dayton's proposal is apparently the first by the governor of a state in the Mississippi River watershed. This will be the first time the state has attempted to regulate farmers' use of fertilizer. The state already restricts the use of phosphorus on lawns.

In the newest version of the plan, released by Dayton and Agriculture Commissioner Dave Fredrickson, farmers' use of nitrogen fertilizers would be limited by both voluntary and mandatory means, especially in the fall and winter when nitrates are most likely to leach into groundwater because there are no crops to soak them up. Exceptions to the rule would be made for crops that require fall nitrogen, and for areas where there are few crops or the soil isn't prone to nitrate leaching.

Republican legislators panned the new version, calling it a "reactionary re-branding of a vastly unpopular rule" in a statement. The public will be encouraged to give opinions about the plan at public meetings to be scheduled this summer.